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Flooding and High Winds Hit Northern California

SAN FRANCISCO — A fierce Pacific storm howled into Northern California on Friday, bringing a treacherous mix of flooding, hurricane-force winds, and blizzard conditions for millions of residents.

The storm, one of two predicted for the weekend, hit the Bay Area before dawn and knocked out power for more than a million people from Central California to the Oregon border. As of noon Friday, about 850,000 people were still without power, according to Pacific Gas and Electric, which was warning that many customers could be powerless through the weekend, as repair crews in some areas had to retreat in the face of flying debris and tree limbs

Transit was also snarled and ugly.

Several major Bay Area roads and freeways, including Highway 101 and Interstate 580, were closed by airborne construction materials and overturned vehicles, including four trucks that were flipped on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, a major east-west thoroughfare that runs over a north finger of the San Francisco Bay.

A downed tree on the tracks stopped subway service in San Francisco’s Mission District, sending evacuated passengers into the rain, while most ferry services across the bay were also canceled as docked boats rocked like rubber duckies in a bath.

In San Francisco, collapsing scaffoldings took down power lines and broke windows and brought electrically powered buses to a screeching halt along at least one major boulevard, while those attempting to make it to work dodged flying trash cans, orphaned umbrellas and dislocated news-boxes.

Dozens of flights were canceled at the San Francisco airport, where winds topped 65 miles per hour at midmorning, making for impressive and harrowing white caps lapping at the foot of the runways. Delays were two hours.

The highest winds were in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about 150 miles to the east, where the National Weather Service was warning of white-out conditions and 100-mile-an-hour winds.

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Power was sporadic in the mountain towns along Interstate 80, which was briefly closed and where only the most hardy of trucks and chained cars were crawling along.

All told, the weather service said some higher elevations could receive eight feet of snow by the time the second storm blows through at weekend’s end.

The National Weather Service advised that heavy rain carried with it the danger of mudslides, particularly in Southern California areas where brush fires last year stripped the hillsides of the vegetation that helps hold the soil in place.

The authorities advised people living in those areas to have plenty of sandbags available and to watch for signs of flooding.

Wind gusts forced some Lake Tahoe ski areas to shut down ski lifts on Thursday and even higher winds were expected on Friday and Saturday.

After the Friday storm blows through, another is expected to arrive on Saturday afternoon bringing showers and the possibility of thunderstorms and hail.